Open Threads

I’m leaving for London for six days on Monday to visit a friend. I don’t know anything about the city at all except for what I’ve gleaned from a lifetime of listening to Elvis Costello and the Clash. I went once before, but it was for a West Indian wedding, so all I remember is drinking lots of scotch with ice in it and hearing reggae versions of songs that I never thought I’d hear reggae versions of (example). I did learn that Brixton, where the wedding took place, is not as scary as the Clash makes it out to be.

So what I should do there? You’re worldly group, so I’m looking to you for advice. Nothing too crazy, please. I’m not going kayaking on the Thames or anything like that.

Also, any good books about London? I know there’s a lot of great English books, because otherwise how could they make all those Merchant-Ivory movies, right? But a disturbing number of those books take place in the English countryside or Italy or the Punjab. And weirdly, most of the mysteries seem to take place in Oxford.

I thought about reading “Of Human Bondage” but it’s way too long. I also thought about Martin Amis, but he was once in some kind of brat pack with Chris Hitchens and that pisses me off. Plus, I don’t like literary ladies’ men, not so much because my big college crush spurned me for one (who now writes about comic books and video games for Time magazine) but because it gets in the way of the whole suffering artist thing.

What I’m looking for is something along the lines of Theodore Dreiser or Raymond Chandler, only set in London. I want to be able to learn about where Mayfair is relative to SoHo and Oxford Street, while at the same time being entertained. So far I have a book about a London detective by the guy who write Remains Of the Day. But I’ve got a long flight and a long layover in Philly on the way there, so I need more.

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you have to offer.

Update: Thanks so much to everyone for their help! One more question: my cell phone won’t work there. Is there some convenient place I can rent/buy a cheap one that will work?

The sights and sounds of London townPost + Comments (233)

Some quick links:

1.) This Venn diagram made me laugh out loud.

2.) The birthers got slapped down by a judge. Again.

3.) Don Siegelman’s conviction mostly upheld.

4.) The Republicans really are trying to bring back the golden age of Hoover, proposing a total spending freeze.

5.) Obama will overturn the Bush stem cell decision, causing K-LO to state “Another Shot at Life from the Obama Administration.” Given her antics this morning, I want everyone to take a good look this picture:

Attention humans: After that point in your “life,” K-Lo ceases to give two hoots in hell about you. There is a reason they call it the “culture of life.”

6.) Matt Taibbi was on Hardball tonight, and his facial expressions were of visible disgust the entire time he was on. Update- video here:

7.) Don’t forget Real Time with Bill Maher is on tonight.

8.) The Unitarian Jihad name generator is still funny.

9.) An almost live action shot from the Tunch Cam 2009. Apparently we are still crabby:

I grow more convinced he is going to kill me in my sleep with every passing day.

10.) Bernie Madoff is probably going to plead guilty. If you got screwed by Madoff, it is your right to be heard.

11.) If CNN runs one more story or has one more comment about Michelle Obama’s arms, I may lose it.

If you have anything to add, here is a shiny new thread.

Also, BSG tonight, I believe.

Friday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (149)

Is it just me, or did this seem like a really, really long week?

At least the weather is starting to turn, and it is nice enough to sit outside and read and get some fresh air. Go wireless.

NY Times tries to promote the late night Jimmy Fallon experiment. I was up late the other night and watched about fifteen minutes, and it was the most criminally unfunny fifteen minutes in late night television history. If you want a cruel comparison, watch Fallon’s opening monologue while you tivo Craig Ferguson, then watch Ferguson.

No weekend plans for me. How ’bout you?

*** Update ***

Everyone go here and vote for Gary Farber.

Long WeekPost + Comments (257)

It’s interesting to watch these things evolve. Brooks last week:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

Roger Cohen yesterday (via John and Kevin Drum):

But that does not change the fact that Obama, in his restorative counter-revolution, must be careful to steer clear of his French temptation.

Jay Leno last night:

“The financial [crisis] seems big enough,” Leno said. “[Obama is] also taking on energy and health care. Is he biting off too much? Should we just go, ‘All right, let’s fix the economy; next year we’ll talk about health care or energy.’ Should you pick one and focus on that? It’s like we’re doing everything all at the same time.”

Broder yesterday:

But many of these governmental pros clearly are doubtful whether this administration — or any other — can make it work.

Brooks today:

I’m still convinced the administration is trying to do too much too fast and that the hasty planning and execution of these complex policies will lead to untold problems down the road.

All of these critiques have one thing in common: they offer no substantive criticism of any particulars of any policy but rather an overall pessimism about the possibility of doing anything. In that sense, this is a classic example of a Beltway meme. It has no basis in any definable or quantifiable reality, but instead exists only as an unspecific reaction in the guts of various Beltway wisemen.

Memewatch: too fast, too furiousPost + Comments (67)

We need a clean one. What did I miss today?

*** Update ***

Pretty solid piece on the foreclosure crisis and how it is impacting Cleveland in the NY Times Magazine. This stands out:

There was something else going on in the city that was even more destructive. Unlike fast-growing communities in Florida and California, Cleveland didn’t see housing prices rise through the stratosphere. But even moderately rising property values created the conditions for subprime lenders to exploit strapped homeowners. Cold-calling mortgage brokers offered refinancing deals that would let homeowners use the equity in their houses to pay off other debts. A neighbor of Brancatelli’s had medical problems and fell behind in her bills. She refinanced, then did it two more times, draining the equity in her house. “She used her house as an A.T.M.,” Brancatelli says. “In the end, they just walked away. The debt exceeded the value of the house.” In other instances, mortgage brokers would cruise neighborhoods, looking for houses with old windows or a leaning porch, something that needed fixing. They would then offer to arrange financing to pay for repairs. Many of those deals were too good to be true, and interest rates ballooned after a short period of low payments. Suddenly burdened with debt, people began to lose homes they had owned free and clear.

As early as 2000, a handful of public officials led by the county treasurer, Jim Rokakis, went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and pleaded with it to take some action. In 2002, the city passed an ordinance meant to discourage predatory lending by, among other things, requiring prospective borrowers to get premortgage counseling. In response, the banking industry threatened to stop making loans in the city and then lobbied state legislators to prohibit cities in Ohio from imposing local antipredatory lending laws.

Ugh.

I know why this story seems so familiar. There was a PBS special on Cleveland’s housing crisis.

Here is another anecdote from the Times piece:

Mayra Caraballo, a 39-year-old mother of two, appeared in court in response to code violations on her home. She explained to Pianka that she no longer owned the house. She had lost her job at a processing plant, and an adjustable rate had kicked in on her mortgage, boosting her monthly payments to $1,100, from $800. She had left after receiving a foreclosure notice. The house was quickly stripped of everything but the furnace. Pianka asked a clerk to check into the house’s ownership; he suspected that the lender had withdrawn the foreclosure at the last minute, as is becoming more common. The clerk tracked down the trustee on the mortgage, Deutsche Bank, and confirmed that the foreclosure had indeed been withdrawn. Pianka calls these situations “toxic titles.” “You’re in limbo,” Pianka told a shocked Caraballo. “There’s no hope in your getting out of this property as a result of foreclosure. We’re seeing this more and more.”

Pianka sees these toxic titles as an effort by lenders to dodge responsibility for vacant houses. Later, I called Deutsche Bank to ask about Caraballo’s house. “We don’t own the property,” a spokesman told me. “We’re the owner of record, but the investors who bought the mortgage-backed securities own it.” Pianka chuckled when I told him of the bank’s response. “That’s their mantra: we don’t own it,” he said. “It’s handy for them to say, ‘Oh, it’s not us.’ It’s part of this big shell game they’re playing.” I checked in with Caraballo, too. She’s now renting and working part time at a day care center. She told me that she would like to move back into the house, but she’s not sure she has the money to replace all the hardware that has been stripped by scavengers or to make the necessary repairs.

I have no idea if the mortgage plan the Obama team rolled out will address things like this, but it seems like a good place to start. This seems like the absolute worst outcome. What a disaster.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (97)

Reading David Brooks’ “A Moderate Manifesto”, I remembered another manifesto he wrote a few years ago, “Karl’s New Manifesto”, wherein he imagines being visited by the spirit of Karl Marx. He wrote:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and proletariat, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stand in opposition to each other and carry on a constant fight. In the information age, in which knowledge is power and money, the class struggle is fought between the educated elite and the undereducated masses.

The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of production, the education system. The median family income of a Harvard student is $150,000. According to the Educational Testing Service, only 3 percent of freshmen at the top 146 colleges come from the poorest quarter of the population. The educated class ostentatiously offers financial aid to poor students who attend these colleges and then rigs the admission criteria to ensure that only a small, co-optable portion of them can get in.

The educated class reaps the benefits of the modern economy – seizing for itself most of the income gains of the past decades – and then ruthlessly exploits its position to ensure the continued dominance of its class.

Yesterday, he wrote:

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

[….]

But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together — in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority….Moderates are going to have to try to tamp down the polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.

I’m sure Brooks would say he didn’t really believe the first manifesto, that it was his alterego David Marx or Slim Brooksie or David Fierce or whatever.

But isn’t it a bit strange to write one column that ends “Undereducated workers of the world, unite! Let the ruling educated class tremble! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win!” and another that suggests that it’s important to make the working class sacrifice even more than they already are in the name of “Hamiltonian moderation”?

The many manifestos of David BrooksPost + Comments (46)